Posts Tagged ‘Other Thoughts’

While parked in front of the TV, switching between the NBA playoffs and the draft, with fantasy baseball info updating live on my Macbook, my brain is preparing to melt. Before it does, I felt the need to post some obversations on all three goings on before my head explodes:

The draft is stupid. The whole dog-n-pony show is a farce. I find myself tuning in and rapidly changing the channel back to playoff basketball. The thought that it will almost certainly rate higher than basketball on a night when LeBron AND Kobe are playing is just an example of Americans’ blind devotion to football without giving the NBA a chance. There are few things in sports that get me more excited than playoff basketball, and the Super Bowl isn’t one of them (World Cup, Yankees in the playoffs…the Jets last year).

What I did catch of the draft made me want to pull the trigger all over Jon Gruden à la this guy. Not every single guy drafted will be a Pro Bowler, but you wouldn’t know it listening to Mr. Gruden. “This guy’s the real deal,” “Earl Thomas will be an All-Pro very soon,” “He’s a heckuva football player.” I know you desperately want another head coaching gig, but showering praise all over every single GM in the NFL on their night to shine is not the way to do it. Okay, rant over.

Jake Peavy continues to make everyone wonder what the heck happened to the guy who won the pitching triple crown that one time? 4 IP, 7 hits, 7 walks, 7 runs, 5 Ks. Seven was not my lucky number tonight. He and Scott Baker combined to pretty much nullify yesterday’s beautiful pitching performances.

Derrick Rose played better than LeBron James tonight. It was pretty close, and LeBron won the box-score-off (The King had 39 points, 10 boards, 8 assists, 2 steals, 3 blocks, with 5 turnovers vs. Rose’s 32, 7 assists, 2 rebounds, but zero turnovers, and absolutely took over late. There was a stretch where the Cavs were mounting a frenzy of a comeback, but Rose was just doing anything he wanted offensively. He is easily the fastest player in the NBA, and it’s not close. He made Mo Williams/Delonte West look so bad that the Cavs wound up putting Bron Bron on him, which worked. Bulls won though, so that was cool. Sweeps are boring, unless the Yankees do it.

Get out of my way, Saturn

That’s all I got. The one good thing about draft night (recently) is when the Jets pick, and that was a freaking awesome pick in Kyle Wilson. Are you scared yet, league?

In case you haven’t read it enough, Jason Heyward has pretty much been deified on this site. More evidence continues to surface to corroborate my (and all of Atlanta’s) argument, as he hit a home run with two outs in the bottom of the ninth to tie the Phillies, and the Braves would go on to win in extra innings, courtesy of a Nate McLouth walk-off job. Heyward now has four homers, and is tied for fourth in the majors in RBI with 16. He hits sixth in the Braves lineup still, inexplicably behind the useless Troy Glaus, who is hitting .200 with only 2 HR and 8 RBI. Move him up, Cox!

While The Say Hey Baby is trying his balls off to captain my teams onto the leaderboard, they continue to slip. The Loney Bones and Teamocil both lost points yesterday, falling to third and sixth respectively. My offenses, save for Heyward, have completely sputtered. It’s okay, the Hero’s Journey is never easy, but I shall prevail in the end.

Other thoughts on last night’s action:

Darnell McDonald single-handedly saved the Red Sox from themselves last night, hitting a game-tying two-run homer in the eighth and a walk-off single in the ninth. How ironic that a black player rescued the most racist organization in sports…hmm, maybe there is something to this whole integration dealy. For the record, Willie Harris yesterday said he had heard that Boston is a racist city, but said he didn’t experience it while he was there for a few months in 2006. However, since then, I can count the African American that have played for the Sox on one hand – Mike Cameron, Bill Hall, Joey Gathright, Coco Crisp and Royce Clayton. Other than Crisp, none of them played in 100 games, and Crisp was run out of town as soon as Jacoby Ellsbury came along (admittedly, that had more to do with talent than race). That number still strikes me as abysmally low. Just a gripe.

Matt Kemp is tied for the lead in the NL in homers and in the whole damn league in RBI. Remember just two years ago when he was struggling to get playing time because Joe Torre was set on playing Juan Pierre? The guy’s ridiculous, and by next March could be in the discussion for the number one overall pick. He’s also stolen two bases so far. I don’t want to get into what numbers he’s on pace for, but the numbers he’s likely to reach this year could be something like .310, 35 HR, 110 RBI, 100 R and 25 SB. In other words, just redonkalous numbers. Just redonkalous…

Jabula, who I’ve repeatedly trashed for his dealings with The Villain, overtook the lead from said Villain last night, and is free to bite his thumb at me. Kudos on streaming effectively thus far, but somehow I doubt when all is said and done Nelson Cruz will be leading the majors in HR and Jorge Cantu will do the same in RBI, both of whom are doing just that for his team. Enjoy it while it lasts, and I’ll at least take solace in the fact that no true Yankee fan owns Kevin Youkilis.

Carlos Zambrano of Teamocil made the Mets look foolish yesterday, allowing only a two-run triple to Jose Reyes in six innings, striking out nine. While his ERA and WHIP are, how you say, ATROCIOUS, he does have 26 strikeouts in 19.1 innings, which is phenomenal. The 7.45 ERA and 1.86 WHIP aren’t worth it at all, but if he can string together a couple of fine starts like last night’s, he’ll be fine. Remember, he’s never had a year in which his ERA has been above 3.95, so he’s got that going for him. Among his foolish-looking victims was Mets call-up Ike Davis, who’s had a history of strikeout issues in the minors, as detailed here. Acquire at your own risk.

Finally, Jeff Mathis went to the DL with a broken wrist, paving the way for HR-exclusive Mike Napoli, who was a Loney Bone, and made his triumphant return about 5 minutes ago. I say HR-exclusive because all he does is hit home runs. He has a career pace of one home run every 16.8 at-bats, which is about a half-AB less than Hank Aaron. So yeah, he’s pretty good at socking some dingers. If you have a need for home runs and don’t own Victor Martinez, Joe Mauer or Brian McCann, I would recommend picking him up.

Today I joined former Washington Post assistant managing editor for sports George Solomon and his class at UMD for a field trip to lovely Nationals Park. I wasn’t told why his class was going, just that they were going and that I could tag along if I wanted. Well, I wanted to and I did. I was all, “Man, we’re going to go in the locker room, I’m going to get to interview Ryan Zimmerman, Adam Dunn, former Terp Justin Maxwell…it’ll be awesome!” I started thinking I can ask them some questions about fantasy baseball.

So I get there like a half hour early, jot down like 20 questions for those three, and meet with ol’ George (he’s very old), and find out that we won’t be interviewing those guys, we won’t be going into the locker room, or anything remotely useful for this blog. We will sit down in the press room and listen to Miguel Batista and Willie Harris talk about the culture of Major League Baseball and what it’s like being Dominican or African American in today’s MLB. Useless for fantasy reasons, considering they’re both un-ownable, and pretty useless for most reasons. Except for one: the incredible discovery that Willie Harris is the real-life version of Willie Mays Hayes.

Willie Mays Hayes: Play Like Mays, Run Like Hayes

Some quotes I remember from the half hour interview:

“Willie Harris has got to look out for Willie Harris.”

“I wanted to be just like Vince Coleman. I studied film, tried to make my game identical to his.”

“I was big into football in high school. Then I realized I was too small and got out, and got serious about baseball in college.”

“We should’ve gotten the live chicken.”

That last quote was from Mays Hayes himself in Major League and not actually from Harris today, but it might as well have been. It struck me afterward how similar the two were, and I asked the other people there if they agreed, and they all said there was a distinct similarity.

Also, Miguel Batista’s is the freakin’ man. I would go into more detail about that, but you’ll just have to take my word because I don’t feel like it (one thing I will say is that he goes to Central America and backpacks around with a backpack full of books and gives them to poor kids. Yeah, awesome).

Some more thoughts that are actually fantasy relevant:

Carlos Zambrano faces the Mets today. If he gets blown up, I’m dropping him no questions asked. I don’t care how good Ike Davis is, the Mets’ offense is terrible and if he turns in anything other than a quality start he doesn’t deserve to be on any team, let alone mine.

Jason Heyward is second in the majors in RBI, one behind Jorge Cantu, who’s had at least one RBI in every single game but two thus far, starting the year with 14-straight games with one. Why this got so little coverage I have no idea. Heyward is officially a beast, I knew it, picked him up in both leagues, and won’t shut up about him until he slumps. Sorry. Sidenote: he’s exactly 50 days older than I am. Further sidenote: I am now depressed.

Check back here at THATV (the acronym for this blog that shall henceforth be used) later tonight for the post about my team in my other Auction League, which features commenters Brando Commando, Ben, and Jay Bee. Exciting, huh?

Subscribe to THATV Now!

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.